Marrying deft social commentary to a rich, earthy comedy, the three comedies collected in Aristophanes' The Frogs and Other Plays offers a unique insight into one of the most turbulent periods in Ancient Greek history. The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, a...
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First presented in 411 B.C., this ancient comedy concerns the efforts of Lysistrata, an Athenian woman, to persuade other women to join together in a strike against the men of Greece, denying them sex until they've agreed to put down their arms and end the disastrous wars between Athens and Sparta.
When the strike begins, and the men respond, the comedic battle of the sexes that ensues makes this spirited play one of the most enjoyable of the classics. In it, Aristophanes employs a mixture of shrewd logic and raffish humor that fully exploits the rich comic potential of the story and ...
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In An Oresteia, the classicist Anne Carson combines three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus -- A iskhylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra and Euripides' Orestes. After the murder of her daughter Iphigeneia by her husband, Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother's revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra's actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father's death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes is driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family. Co...
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The four tragedies collected in this volume all focus on a central character, once powerful, brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred. The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the pr...
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